the greatest impediment to admitting and correcting mistakes in the criminal justice system is that most of its members reduce dissonance by denying that there is a problem. “Our system has to create this aura of close to perfection, of certainty that we don’t convict innocent people,” said former prosecutor Bennett Gershman.49 The benefit of this certainty to police officers, detectives, and prosecutors is that they do not spend sleepless nights worrying that they might have put an innocent person in prison. But a few sleepless nights are called for. Doubt is not the enemy of justice;
...more
